Ying-Jie Chen

About

NUWA credits a specific milestone to Ying-Jie Chen’s laboratory work: the completion of Mackay Memorial Hospital’s first egg-freezing baby. A birth from a frozen oocyte closes a long chain — stimulation monitoring, retrieval, vitrification, thaw, fertilisation, culture to transfer and live delivery — so an institution’s first such baby speaks to the whole process holding together rather than one bench step going right. That achievement now sits behind the Laboratory Director post Chen holds at NUWA Lab.

The academic line reads as genome sciences, from the Department of Life Sciences and Institute of Genome Sciences at National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, a field oriented toward chromosomes and gene-level analysis. Before NUWA, Chen held a technical-team leader role at the Mackay Memorial Hospital reproductive center and an embryologist post at the Cathay General Hospital reproductive center, so the working years cover both hands-on embryo handling and running a laboratory team.

Two entries point at process detail rather than general seniority. The first is a patent for an “Egg Retrieval Constant Temperature System”, which addresses the temperature window between the follicle leaving the body and the egg reaching the bench. The second is an instructor role in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at National Taiwan University Hospital, framing laboratory technique as something that has to be teachable to a trainee.

Clinical Expertise

• Egg freezing and oocyte vitrification: the full sequence from timed stimulation and retrieval through controlled-rate freezing to thaw and survival assessment, where success is measured by whether the oocyte still fertilises after warming rather than by the freeze alone.
• IVF laboratory operations: sperm and egg preparation, choice of insemination or injection, embryo culture and the daily observation that decides whether a cycle yields something transferable.
• Laboratory technical management: as laboratory director, ownership of the working procedures, equipment specifications, staff allocation and record-keeping that keep retrieval-to-transfer consistency across cycles.
• Embryology: the discipline of embryo development itself, applied at the microscope to grade maturation, fertilisation and cleavage or blastocyst stage.
• Genetics and genome-science background: chromosome-level training maps onto the laboratory side of preimplantation screening workflows, where biopsy handling and sample condition determine whether a result is usable.

Why Choose Ying-Jie Chen

An institution’s first egg-freezing baby is a concrete, checkable result. The hard part of egg freezing is not cooling the oocyte but proving that months or years later it still thaws, fertilises and carries to term. NUWA credits that completed outcome to Chen, which speaks to experience with the entire pipeline rather than a single technical step. For anyone consulting about deferring fertility, it is a directly assessable point about who runs the egg-freezing bench.

A patent aimed at the retrieval window. The “Egg Retrieval Constant Temperature System” targets a narrow and unforgiving interval: once follicular fluid leaves the body, temperature and time begin to affect whether the egg can still be fertilised. Designing equipment for that gap and securing a patent on it usually reflects someone who has met the failure modes at that step often enough to try to engineer them out.

Two layers of laboratory experience. The embryologist post at Cathay General Hospital covers the operating years; the technical-team leader role at Mackay covers the supervisory ones. Standards, process checks and training in a fertility lab typically rest with the technical lead, so having held both gives the current director post a clinical and managerial foundation behind it.

A teaching appointment. The instructor role in the National Taiwan University Hospital ART course means laboratory work is delivered as curriculum to trainees. An embryologist who teaches that material generally has to hold the technique to a standard that can be explained and reproduced, not kept as personal in-house habit.

Genome-level academic training. The degree sits in a genome sciences institute, a discipline built around chromosomes and genetic analysis. That orientation lines up with the laboratory coordination that embryo chromosome screening later requires.

Professional Affiliations

Education: the Department of Life Sciences and Institute of Genome Sciences at National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University. Experience: Laboratory Director at NUWA Lab, with earlier posts as technical-team leader at the Mackay Memorial Hospital reproductive center and embryologist at the Cathay General Hospital reproductive center. Chen also instructs in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at National Taiwan University Hospital and holds a patent for the egg-retrieval constant temperature system; Mackay Memorial Hospital’s first egg-freezing baby is credited to Chen’s laboratory work. Chen is a laboratory technical director rather than a licensed clinical physician.

Suitable For

Patients whose main goal is egg freezing: the value of a frozen egg is only proven at thaw, fertilisation and delivery, so a laboratory lead who carried a prior center’s first frozen-egg program to a live birth is a defensible person to ask about how those eggs would actually be handled.

Maintaining egg quality on the day of retrieval: the minutes between the needle and the incubator are when an oocyte is most exposed, and that handoff is exactly the step the named patent system was built to control.

Patients who scrutinise embryology laboratory detail: culture conditions, handling habits and process checks all fall under the director’s responsibility, and the role spans both a teaching-hospital reproductive center and the current clinic.

Cycles that need teaching-grade process transparency: a laboratory lead who also instructs an ART course tends to describe work in terms a trainee could repeat, which suits patients who want to know what their eggs or embryos go through inside the lab.

Repeated retrievals accumulating eggs or embryos: patients with diminished ovarian reserve build a cohort cycle by cycle, and the survival and consistency of each frozen batch is what determines how many usable results they end up with.